9 grim truths about office Christmas parties

Think photocopying your rear is the peak of debauched festive merriment? Not so. Here's what Mumsnetters have learned about the office Christmas 'do'.

Share

1. The slimeballs in middle management will always outdo themselves…

“I stayed sober at mine after being warned what people were like. I was offered coke, propositioned by two men old enough to be my dad and our MD was heckled (not in a humorous way) during his speech. All before 11pm.”

“My old boss had a threesome with two of his employees at the last Christmas party. In an alleyway.”

2. … but at least in 2017 it's equal opportunities sleaze

“Some of the female managers are notorious. They usually end up grinding on the dance floor and kissing each other. A couple of years ago they grabbed one of the senior execs (older gentleman, very quiet and reserved) and they clawed his shirt off. They ripped the buttons off and everything.”

3. A quickie in the stationary cupboard? Pah, for amateurs

“One year a couple went off and were up to 'something'. They later fell through a ceiling, resulting in the girl breaking her leg.”

4. People forget there's a future

“It's like they forget that the next day things go back to normal and you have to go back to working with these people. I've seen urinating in the street, copping off with managers and married men, fighting and shouting at police.”

5. There is insufficient brain bleach in the WORLD

“The sight of having sex with two men in a glass-walled office which was open to the party(!) will never leave me. Once you've seen your boss get sucked off you know it's time to leave: the party, the job, the whole company.”

6. The quiet ones will surprise you

“I worked in libraries for many years. At one Christmas do a bloke started to go on about 'when you pay prostitutes'. At another, two of the female librarians had an actual fight on the floor of a pub over a man.”

7. Even the tamer ones have a whiff of anarchy about them

“I've been to some bonkers Christmas work parties, but there was never any sleazy stuff, groping or nudity. They were just mad for the sheer recklessness of it all. I rather enjoyed them.”

8. If you don't have an office, you need to get creative

“When my husband was a stay-at-home-dad, I used to take him out for a meal and call it his Christmas party. We were making plans to get drunk and shag over the photocopier, but the closest we could find was the PC printer in the children's room. It wasn't a goer.”

9. However much you dread them, you'll do it all again next year

“Every year, emboldened by the booze, someone will declare 'I'm going to go over and tell those management cunts what I really think of them'. No one does. Then we go to the pub for more bitter talk and joyless drinking. We all wake up the next morning with a deep sense of regret and brutal hangovers, swearing it is the last year we'll go. But the lure of the free cans of warm Tennent's and a running buffet is too strong, and the charade continues year after year.”